If ads interfere with the mobile experience, it'll spell bad news for the site.

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Pop-up ads are annoying on desktop, but even more frustrating on mobile devices when they sometimes take over the browser. Google wants to fix that: in a blog post, the company announced that, starting next year, websites with intrusive advertisements will be punished and may be pushed down in search results.

Essentially, Google wants search results to favor sites that have the best information and the least annoying advertisements that cover up that information. "While the underlying content is present on the page and available to be indexed by Google," the blog post says, "content may be visually obscured by an interstitial. This can frustrate users because they are unable to easily access the content that they were expecting when they tapped on the search result."

Google claims these intrusive ads and interstitials create "a poorer experience" for users, particularly on mobile where space is limited by smaller screens. It's not wrong—sometimes pop-up or pop-over ads that show up on mobile websites can take up the entire display, forcing you to view them while furiously trying to find the "X" to close them. After January 10, 2017, sites that show these kinds of ads (which include content-obscuring "please subscribe to our newsletter!" pop-overs) "may not rank as highly" in search results.

The point of this change is to make the mobile experience better by favoring sites that don't use ads that take over the site when a user opens a page from search results. It's not secret that Google favors the mobile experience in general, as it changed its algorithm last year to give "mobile-friendly" websites a boost. However, not all interstitials will be affected by this change—only the most annoying ones will. Sites that have pop-up ads that ask for age verification (think alcohol brands) won't be affected, nor will sites that have pop-ups for cookie usage disclosure or those that have banner ads that use "a reasonable amount of screen space."

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Valentina Palladino
Valentina reviews consumer electronics for Ars Technica, testing all kinds of gadgets with a focus on mobile devices and wearables. She has a soft spot for Chromebooks. Twitter@valentinalucia

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

And that ultimately might be Google's biggest fear - the proliferation of ad blockers on mobile as a result of these class of annoying adverts.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

And that ultimately might be Google's biggest fear - the proliferation of ad blockers on mobile as a result of these class of annoying adverts. .

I'd leave ad blockers off if advertisers could behave with some basic respect for my time, attention, and experience. Popover ads are among the worst culprits. They're intrusive and disrespectful. They can have an inch, but they insist on taking a yard, and if they do that, I am not inclined to give them anything.

I'll believe it when I see the results, but I hope to hell this works. I miss the 2009 version of the web. On that note, can you make RSS a big deal again and resurrect Yahoo Pipes too, Google? Also bring back the days of social networks playing fast and loose with their API maybe? Thanks in advance!

Google will never de-rank sites with ads, considering their largest source of revenue is probably ads. They also own Doubleclick, an ads network. However, I suspect these "annoying" ads aren't served by them, so I wonder how it will play in the antitrust stage?

Keep in mind that we live in an era where people are begging their visitors to turn off Adblock on their site because it's their source of revenue even though they themselves use it too for exact same reason as their visitors. It's a horrible circle. Google's best solution is to regulate ads even if it costs them.

I would love to see Google also warn sites that automatically play videos or other media. New sites will play unrelated videos with a news story. With US ISPs trying not to provide bandwidth to their customers it also should be a users selective option.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

And that ultimately might be Google's biggest fear - the proliferation of ad blockers on mobile as a result of these class of annoying adverts. .

I'd leave ad blockers off if advertisers could behave with some basic respect for my time, attention, and experience. Popover ads are among the worst culprits. They're intrusive and disrespectful. They can have an inch, but they insist on taking a yard, and if they do that, I am not inclined to give them anything.

Those and ones that play music or have voice over make the top 2 of my list. #3 is any add with flashing colors. #4 is ads for mobile games using the 'sex sells' methodology.

Google will never de-rank sites with ads, considering their largest source of revenue is probably ads. They also own Doubleclick, an ads network. However, I suspect these "annoying" ads aren't served by them, so I wonder how it will play in the antitrust stage?

Saying they'll never de-rank sites with (their) ads is I think oversimplifying it.

There are behaviors that make ads more effective, both in the moment and over time. There are behaviors that make ads less effective, over time, even if they "generate more impressions" in the very short term.

I can certainly see Google punishing sites that engage in advertising behaviors that are destructive in the long term, even if Google is the ad provider.

They're in it for the long haul and use a lot of statistical mojo. That's as opposed to sites that are in it for a quick buck and sometimes make poorly-informed design decisions.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

Does Google serve ads with this behavior?

I don't think they serve ads that actually cover or block access to the page, but the third category they're deranking ("Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold") certainly seems like something you could do with a page using AdSense (though whether or not you could be removed from their ad services for doing so, I don't really know). It's also worth noting that the reason they don't do most of these things is because they try to avoid doing most of the things that make ads as insanely obnoxious as they usually are in general - they have a pretty thorough and strict policy devoted just to the placement of ads for people using their service.

As has been mentioned, Google's got a vested interest in preventing the online ad industry from crashing and burning and that pretty necessarily requires that they do everything in their power to prevent obnoxious ads from being the norm.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

And that ultimately might be Google's biggest fear - the proliferation of ad blockers on mobile as a result of these class of annoying adverts.

Edited to add a few missing words. Coffee is my friend.

Bingo. I recently went on vacation for four days, and what I considered light web browsing cost me over 1 GB in data, due to the ads (I didn't watch any video or do anything else data intensive). So I downloaded an ad blocking web browser.

Now to punish sites that have a mobile landing page about installing their crappy mobile app (or click here to continue to the mobile site). I have a mobile app for viewing your site. It is the same app I use to view all mobile websites.

... ads that show up on mobile websites can take up the entire display, forcing you to view them while furiously trying to find the "X" to close them. ...

... and then when you find that "X" and click on it, the ad promptly opens two more browser windows in the background, stealthily waiting for you to stumble upon those ads.

Yeah. I realize that Google has an obvious conflict of interest, in that they're probably targeting their competitors in the ad space, through these policy changes... but none-the-less, I'm still going to have to agree with them, in principle: those interstitial ads need to die a horrible, ignominious death.

You would think that advertisers themselves would actually show some concern over user experience. After all, the whole point of the exercise is to create a positive feeling about your brand. If I find I can't read a website because it's being obscured by a gray box I can't close, the last thing I want to do, is keep banging my head against the same wall.

Now to punish sites that have a mobile landing page about installing their crappy mobile app (or click here to continue to the mobile site). I have a mobile app for viewing your site. It is the same app I use to view all mobile websites.

That's actually part of what they're doing here. According to their blog, they actually started by looking into specifically detecting sites using interstitials that ask users to install a mobile app (ie. what you're talking about) but then broadened it to cover most interstitials in general.

Here's an idea: How about Google fix the browser? In the past month, I've noticed a rash of Chrome for Android "Hijackings" on my phone - the pattern goes like this - you go to a legitimate site (maybe news, a web comic, etc). The ad network that site uses to get revenue delivers an "ad" that immediately takes you to another page that has redirects that send you to another page, that pops up a message (often a scary sounding scam like "WARNING: We have detected that your phone is infected with XXX. Click OK to clean your phone".

Here's the kicker - you CAN'T CLOSE the current browser tab to get back to your other web sites, because these popup messages completely take over the user interface of the Chrome browser - you can't click on the tabs button to navigate to another tab or close the current tab, you can't click on the address bar to enter a different address. If you click the Android OS-level "back" button, it takes you to the previous page which is the page that just immediately redirects you back to the popup message.

The only way I've found to get back control of my browser (I'm sure not going to click the "OK" button in that popup because who knows what that OK will cause to happen next - I sure don't want to find out), is to hit the OS-level "Home" button to go to my Android desktop, then enter a different website into the Google-bar widget on the desktop, which will then open the new site in a new tab in Chrome, and that tab will be the top-level, active tab, and THEN I can finally hit the chrome "Tabs" button and close the offending browser tab.

This is a big problem, and needs a browser level fix. No webpage should ever be able to completely remove my ability to control the Browser. If it can, shame on the browser.

Google goes well out of their way to try and prevent intrusive advertisements specifically because they understand that it leads to people either refusing to use the services serving those ads (which means less revenue for them) or to people using ad-blockers (which means less revenue for them). They're maybe the only internet advertiser that understands, at least for the most part, that it's in their best interests to avoid making people do what you've done.

Good. I can live with unobtrusive ads, but when the ad stops me from using the damn site, that site goes on my shit list and I visit it with my secondary browser (which has an ad blocker). The biggest offender for me has been Wikia, which is a good source of information for many games, but each page puts an ad in my way (with a timer! so I can't even close it right away). So now they get no ad views from me.

While I really appreciate Google trying to kill pop-over ads, I do find it a little unsettling that a single company can have so much sway over how websites from thousands of different companies operate. Do what Google wants or users won't be able to find your site in the only search engine most people use. Again, I'm glad they're using their influence for something that benefits users, but are they guaranteed to do this next time too?

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

Does Google serve ads with this behavior?

I don't think they serve ads that actually cover or block access to the page, but the third category they're deranking ("Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold") certainly seems like something you could do with a page using AdSense (though whether or not you could be removed from their ad services for doing so, I don't really know).

They definitely do. You're not allowed to do it yourself, but if you get access to that beta program (last I heard, they're inviting basically every Adsense account), full page overlay ads done Google's way (Vignette ads) on mobile are definitely encouraged by Google.

Now to punish sites that have a mobile landing page about installing their crappy mobile app (or click here to continue to the mobile site). I have a mobile app for viewing your site. It is the same app I use to view all mobile websites.

YES! THAT!

I refuse to install an app for every single web site in the world. How many billion apps would that be?

If a site has an app that actually does something, then that's different. For example, an app to manage pharmacy refills.

But an app that is nothing more than an information viewer? I already have a general purpose universal information viewer. It's called a web browser.

The other reason why a web site wants an app, is so that it gets a foothold, a beachhead into your device. Now they can spam your notification bar at any odd time of day, even when you're not using their site.

A nice step. But better curation by the ad companies would be a lot better. I'll be keeping my ad blockers till I no longer have to worry about ads redirecting me or ones that use absurd amounts of data.

Does Google serve ads with this behavior?

I don't think they serve ads that actually cover or block access to the page, but the third category they're deranking ("Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold") certainly seems like something you could do with a page using AdSense (though whether or not you could be removed from their ad services for doing so, I don't really know).

They definitely do. You're not allowed to do it yourself, but if you get access to that beta program, full page overlay ads done Google's way (Vignette ads) on mobile are definitely encouraged by Google.

I'm aware of those, but they don't fall into either of the specific categories they're covering. The anchor ads aren't allowed to actually block access to pages and the vignette ads are displayed when a user leaves a page rather than when they arrive, so they wouldn't be covered here either.

happened to me when i went to the "eetimes" web site to read about fab node size... Could not get to the site, because you have to dismiss an ad that you can not see...

I get the thing where I go to a site, try to zoom in, realize the evil shitsack web designer has blocked zooming because their foul hearts are composed of black ice, run the bookmarklet that overrides zoom blocking, zoom in on the text because the aforementioned dick web designer set it to 3-point size of the lightest weight font they could fine in their magic murder bags, and THEN the popover ad appears and I can't close it because [1] the close box is way off screen due to the zoom and [2] trying to zoom out only works on the underlying content and not the ad.